Generally, a refrigerator is an apparatus for maintaining food items with a fresh state for a long time by supplying cool air generated by a refrigerating cycle to a storage chamber.
The refrigerator comprises a body having a storage chamber for storing food items therein, and a door by which the storage chamber is opened and closed to store food items therein.
The refrigerator generates cool air to maintain food items stored in the storage chamber at a low temperature, by a refrigerating cycle composed of compression, condensation, expansion, and evaporation processes for a refrigerant.
Recently, most of refrigerators are respectively provided with an ice making device for making ice cubes and storing them so as to enhance a user's convenience.
The ice making device for the conventional refrigerator includes an ice tray for containing water to be frozen therein, a housing mounted with the ice tray and having a storage chamber, an ice-cube storage container for storing frozen ice cubes, etc.
A user separates the ice tray from the housing, and supplies water to the ice tray with holding the ice tray. Then, the user mounts the ice tray to inside of the housing.
However, while mounting the ice tray to inside of the housing, water may be discharged out of the ice tray due to an inclined state of the ice tray or hand trembling, etc. This may cause inside of the housing to be contaminated.
Furthermore, since water is biased to an inclined direction of the ice tray, ice cubes may be made with small and non-uniform sizes.
Especially, when the ice making device is provided with a plurality of ice trays, the respective ice trays have to be separated from the housing one by one, and then mounted to the housing. In this case, the above problems become more severe.
In order to solve the problems, has been disclosed a method for supplying water to the ice tray by using a water tank in a state that the ice tray has been coupled to the housing.
According to the method, once the water tank having water therein is coupled to the housing, the water is supplied to the ice tray through a valve opened upon the coupling between the water tank and the housing.
However, in this case, a water tank having a valve device has to be additionally provided. This may increase the cost of the refrigerator.
Furthermore, since the valve device and the water tank can not be easily cleaned, water or ice cubes may be contaminated.
Besides, ice cubes are taken out of the refrigerator by withdrawing the ice-cube storage container by opening the door. This may cause a user's inconvenience, and cool air may be leaked while the door is opened and closed, resulting in increase of power consumption.